🔢 A lower symbol ✍️ To write below 🔡 Lowercase position

to subscript

5.0

To write a small sign below and to the right of a letter or number to show how many

verb
/ˈsʌbˌskrɪpt/

Specialized

: escribir en subíndice

In the chart, each section is subscripted to explain its specific category.

Examples

It is important to note that our measure of income inequality is a long-run average (not subscripted by c), so we are estimating the impact of persistent differences in inequality, not transitory differences.

Academic text (2016)
If I want to make the dependence on the training set explicit, I'll write this with a subscript S there, where S is the training set.
With its 22 Roman-numeral types subscripted with three sharpness classes, it was awkward to use.

Academic text (1992)
In Table 1, symbols for measurements for the year prior to, the year of, and the year following cohort formation are subscripted with "-", "0", and "+", respectively.

Academic text (1997)
In the equation, the variable y is subscripted with the number 1 to indicate the first value.
When writing chemical formulas, the number of atoms is subscripted after the element symbol.

Surface Forms

subscript infinitive

subscripted past

subscripted past participle

subscribing present participle

subscripts third person singular

Morphology

subscript = script (semi-transparent) = sub + script

The meaning is built from the clear elements sub- 'below' and script 'write', but the specialized notation sense is slightly technical.

Etymology

The word subscript as a verb comes from sub- 'under' and script 'write', so it means 'to write under'. To subscript something is simply to put a small letter or number slightly below the line, like the 2 in H2O.